First up, bit of background info... Im 18, from New Zealand, elite ish level racer and i like building and toying so this is what i've been up to recently... the thread is about tuning pedals from a certain company which can be figured out by reversing the words but should not be mentioned because that certain company is notorious for being unfriendly to people who genuinely enjoy their products

For obvious reasons i'm not going to quote the actual brand as serious legal action has been threatened against another user, if you haven't seen the thread have search. Since im only 18 i don't fancy being put through all that hub-ub. From here on in, my designs will be referred to as playspeeds, or 'pedals'

So i have been playing with pedal concepts for a while now, i have built a few of them, but when the offer of building some of these came up from fellow weenie 'Dereksmalls' i decided to give it a crack... NOTE: All parts used in my concepts are not from a certain company that looks like PlaySpeeds, they are all aftermarket products from an entirely different company. So essentially you don't need a set of PlaySpeeds to do a tune like this, all you needis the upgrade kit and your on your way. HOWEVER i do advise that you under take projects like this at your own risk, i take no responsibility for any work done by other people based on wok i have done. Henceforth, any tuned pedals from said company should be called PlaySpeed. and the obvious: tuning or modifying your products will certainly and most likely void any warranties or liability claims against the original manufacturer of your pedals and any tuning should be taken at your own calculated risk. No persons involved in the tuning of their products nor any ideas gleamed from this thread can be held as any guarantee of reliability. Tune at your own risk and be intelligent about your work

Dereksmalls sent down some Ward Ti upgrades (i think) for a standard set of chromoly 'pedals'. Ti Bolts, Bow Ties and Axles arrived in the post one day and i started drawing my concepts. I had seen this link (http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/pho ... aix/115486) and thought the design was sound and i thought i could repeat it easily enough. So i went to the local bearing shop and found some new needle roller bearings for it. They are the exact same size as the standard ones, and the second bearing i put in was the standard roller bearing from the outside edge of the pedal. Easy.

Then i went to the school workshop and run out some bearing housing cylinders. This fit the bearing in each end (light press fit, 0.05mm under size) then in betweenthe two bearings in the dead space i recessed a slot into the housing... This is the same width as the bow tie centre so it slotted in nicely as planned. Then taking the bowties i milled a small half round section out of the very middle where it contacted the new bearing housing. I made sure the milled section in the bow tie was slightly smaller so it would have and in different radius and 'grip' onto the housing to prevent rotation under power.

Here is where i milled the half round out of the bow tie...

My issue now was how to engage and dis engage the cleat. The originals have a small steel insert that is inserted into the bodies... like so:

What i did how ever was taking a 1 1/8th inch headset spacer, i cut a small section that fitted the width of the bowties and then milled a small section similar in shape out of the top and bottom of the section of spacer. This essentially integrated the insert and the correct spacing of the bow ties. It functionally looked like it would work, but when i tried it the spacer would slip round when i un-clipped from the pedal. This is because the bolt alone wasn't enough to hold it in place. After weeks of testing (not joking) i pressed UD carbon in the gap between the bearing housing and the spacers. this works well, and only added 3 grams per pedal.

Here you can see where i milled off material from the spacer. Unfortunately the mill i used gets vandalised by the year 9's (first year of high school kids) so when i moved it along its x axis, it would move ever so slightly on the y axis creating a non smooth finish in the milled area

Next i tuned the already light axles. I milled off the rounded face at the threaded end (that goes into your crank) into a square so it can be done up with a spanner. 15mm on the dot! I then borred into the centre, increasing the internal hole from 5mm to 7.5mm in diametre and from 20mm deep to 35mm deep. This alone dropped 7 grams per axle! This is easy stuff to do withthe right tools, but i managed to cook 5 drill bits since Titanium is darn hard...

I the rebuilt the first pedal and presed in the carbon backing to the spacers and set to try and fault it. I atttached it to the drill and vice at home at spun the bearings it, checked it for trueness, and play. It passed fine so i moved on to re creating the second pedal. A week or three later i was done. Next came cleat work. I had to make sure after my modifications thatthe cleat engaged and dis engaged perfectly. The only issue was that i had to dremel a small section from each cleat. No issues.

Testing followed, a week or two of it, i put them on my Single Speed MTB (fully rigid, running a 48 - 16 gearing which is huge) as when i ride this bike, i go through a set of pedals every year, bottom bracket every three months etc. I abuse the hell out of this bike, but it got me a national title so it still works fine. Riding these pedals on this pig of a bike cleared in my mind that my idea had worked and would function, barring all disasters.

I then lathed up some end caps out of delrin and called the mission complete

The pedals started at 208 grams for a standard straight of the shelf pair. My pair ended up at 118 grams a pair. 90 GRAMS GONE! WOW, i am working on a concept for prototype 2that will drop them under 100 grams a pair, so stay tuned. I also build Aerolite Pedals that are tweaked to my preference, and altered slightly as well if anyone is interested.

Final Pedals DONE

Im about to put them in a box and send them back to Dereksmalls for him to own, along woith some other wee bits i have built him! What do you all think?

No original pedals were harmed or parts reused in the making of these pedals. That company doesn't sell this particular style of pedal anyway. All parts were obtained from third parties or made from scratch. It's not like other people haven't made them as well you know?

Rick - those pedals were 'prototypes' by that company exclusively for Pros, exclusively for one race. So they never made it to market for anyone...

Weeracerweenie - It looks really great and the weight is super impressive!!!

Hopefully this thread will have other contributions from other members as well, it will be good to see more PlaySpeed pedals.

GUYS - DO NOT WRITE THAT COMPANY'S NAME IN THIS THREAD.When you do that, you are placing that name as a searchable term associated with this thread, and Internet Search Engine Bots pick that up pretty quickly. A company such as that will have auto-results sent to them when their company name arrives in new search result, and they will then find this thread. So PLEASE REFER TO THESE OR ANY MODIFIED PEDALS AS "PLAYSPEED" and let's all be able to continue tuning without legal attack.

Here is an idea for what I think would be an incremental improvement:The infamous "rocking" problem is caused by lack of lateral support along the axis of the pedal spindle. This usually occurs because the plastic body of the pedal wears. Your mod (and spoodploy's roubaix models) have no support there because the spindle is round and slightly below the level of the bow tie.

If you were to make the bow tie fit into a recess, and have the spindle with a flat area, at least the width of the cleat contact region, then there would be more metal support and cut way back on the wear that causes rocking. It would look like the bowtie had cross-arms added. It would probably add a few grams, but you have already eliminated so much, and it would solve the prime problem with spoodploys.

Last edited by Rick on Wed Nov 07, 2012 6:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I own three pairs of the original pedals and have not experienced the rocking on any of them with 000s of kms on all pairs. I love their pedals.

In regards to the Roubaix version, Concept 64 already made an imitation of that and Coombes beat them all with their pedal which was even more minimalist. It wouldn't surprise if that is where playspeed took theirs from to start with.

@rick, my now ties are recessed and flat to the bearing housing cylinder. There is vitually no rocking in the pedals like this. I'll post details later on prototype 2 as I'm at school now, but I have plans to drop them below 100/105gm for a pair. I don't see why that's not achievable.

I'm aware that PlaySpeed did concepts and so have other companies but I took the idea, reformed it and refined it. This set isn't perfect by any means but you can't learn without failure.

the herolites are such a simple build. Im working on a heavier pair with bearings for durability purposes. but essentially you take your axle, find some bearings, lathe out a bushing and whammo, you have a pair of light functional pedals. Mine are 70gm with a stainless axle (HEAVY) and not fully worked and tuned. im going to do a 60gm pair with bearings, but this is what they look like when im done...

On the PlaySpeeds topic again, does anyone have recommendations to how to make the insert between the bowties? i have my second designs done, but before i go ahead with them i want some secondary opinions...?

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